Seton Hall has offered a handful of new recruiting targets from the 2017 and 2018 classes following the conclusion of the second and third July evaluation periods.

We’ll start with the trio of rising seniors, as they will likely look to make a decision in the coming months since committing prior to your senior season is a popular trend among high-major recruits.

First up is Villa Park (Calif.) forward Evan Battey, who tweeted out the news this afternoon that Seton Hall’s staff has offered him. A 6-foot-7, 280 lb. post forward who is capable of handling the rock, Battey only held West Coast offers from non-major schools prior to this month: the magic of the July live period at work.

DePaul, New Mexico, UAB, Purdue, Boston College and now Seton Hall have all come calling in the past few weeks for ESPN’s No. 100 prospect in the 2017 class.

Without a high-major scholarship until April, Tennessee, Kansas State, South Carolina, Baylor, Ole Miss, VCU, Georgia, USC, UConn and others all offered Huffman during May and June before LSU, Pittsburgh and now Seton Hall have followed suit in July.

The third recruit to draw Seton Hall’s interest is also from outside the tri-state area.

A top-150 point guard from Wellington (Fla.), Trent Frazier looks to be leaning strongly toward Illinois, but the news is noteworthy nonetheless. Georgia, Memphis and Seton Hall have all offered of late but the Illini appear to be the school to beat here; he visits Champaign officially next month.

Another forward but this time from the Class of 2018, Team Final/Neumann Goretti (Pa.) big Marcus Littles is the second-to-last target to make this list.

Offered earlier today, the local prospect is currently rated top-150 and has collected ‘ships from Miami (Fla.), Penn State, La Salle, Saint Joseph’s, Old Dominion and Saint Louis since April.

Finally, yet another forward in 2018 NJ Playaz/Patrick School (N.J.) product Valdir Manuel was offered a few days ago. Perhaps the most intriguing prospect of the bunch, there is very little info on Valdir, who looks to be a native of Angola.

Around 15 at the time, Valdir played for Angola at the FIBA U17 World Championship two years ago, scoring 12 points and corralling five boards in the process. DePaul is the only other school to have offered this under the radar target.

My thoughts:

Seton Hall could certainly gain from adding a true post forward to their 2017 recruiting class and it looks like Evan Battey does more than just back defenders down while Brandon Huffman already has high-major size. They join guys like reclassified St. Benedict’s big Bourama Sidibe, Ejike Obinna and Jordan Nwora (more of a SF) that the staff was already targeted.

There are currently no open scholarships for next season with Myles Cale occupying graduate transfer Madison Jones’, but that is sure to change over the coming months.

It’s also nice to see the staff reach out to a pair of 2018 bigs, especially a (now) local unknown kid like Valdir Manuel as they don’t have a long list of junior forwards that they have offered when compared to interest in guards.